Such Darkness

This is a story of a man whose character is slowly revealed as he makes his way through utter darkness to an unknown end.

Submitted:Nov 9, 2011
Reads: 38
Comments: 4
Likes: 1

Darkness.

Sudden was his consciousness in the darkness. The void was so
empty it was difficult to understand how it pressed down on him
so devastatingly. His eyes would not open, his mind a fog, but he
considered how he was laying on something soft, almost supple.
Strange what comes to mind first.

Gingerly he tried to raise a hand to his face, but found no hand
to move. Nothing moved, but his nostrils which flared in and out
with each panicking breath he took. Again, his hand, he must have
a hand, that thing he had had all his life. So dear a part of his
body that had built so many things, and destroyed so many things.
A small toy for his son, an empire for his Father. His hand, his
hand.

Perhaps to move his hand was too much. While he dare not open his
eyes more than a crack, nor move his head to view his
surroundings, as if he could in such darkness,he pushed all of
his focus and being into finding his hand, and more so, into
finding his fingers. Just a finger, his index finger, the one
that had fired so many a rifle, writ so many a letter. Find his
finger and wiggle it. Perhaps from there he could find another
finger, and once found they could move his hand, and that would
press whatever was holding him down away, such darkness.

No fingers came to him.

One long deep breath brought a stench to his nose. He knew it was
a bad smell, a maddening smell, and once he had solved the crisis
of his fingers, hand, possibly whole arm, he would have to face
the smell that came with that deep breath.

No fingers.

Strange how memories come back to us. Perhaps it was a slip into
a dream, or something his taxed mind sought in its strain. An old
memory came back to the man in the moment he pushed the smell
away from his mind, and had not yet refocused on his hands. In
the void in his mind came a memory to fill the space.

Decorations painted his chest. He was in full officer dress, and
the room was well lit, well lit and had such an ample amount of
robust smells and flavors in the air. Crystals hung illuminated
in a domed ceiling. He descended a grand stair case to the room
below where fellow officers stood, glasses in hand, purple
flowing between their teeth. The memory flickered forward a
little, and a dance. A dance with a woman in a white dress that
spun around her ankles as they turned in their waltz. Her perfect
blonde hair moved in motion with her dress so smoothly. A smile,
mixed with concern, but the man could only smile back in his
memory. He knew more now that would come after his memory, other
memories, shouts, concrete, smoke, darkness, but he clung to the
memory of her concerned smile as they danced and her dress flowed
inches from the floor. Indeed, her feet seemed to float inches
from the floor as they danced; her blue eyes moist. He liked this
memory.

That smell. Putrid. A decay that filled him.

His fingers came. They only came because pain came, and with the
flash of pain from his arm to his mind the memory vanished.
Winked out, more like. The memory gone like a fly on the surface
of a pond, and only a ripple as it is engulfed by a small fish,
so did his memory pass.

His fingers were there, undoubtedly, but to move them meant more
pain, from shoulder to fingertip.

The man lay still. He felt everything now, from the pain in his
arm to the cramp in his booted foot. The memory was more than
gone now, he'd forgotten he had even been remembering a memory,
so enthralled in the present pain and darkness was he. While he
was very much in his body, his short term memory was scattered,
like an empty radio wave, just noise. He was very much here,
here, where? Why did his arm hurt so much, why was he laying on
some soft moist ground?

Small, he had to start small. He was a man of great logic. He
tried to calm himself through the panic rising from his stomach
to his chest, wanting to escape in a torrent, like a flood from a
levy, gushing from his mouth. He had to contain the screaming,
the fright deep inside him. The logical section of his mind was
beginning to work, awaken, work through the pain and confusion.
His mind could not, or perhaps would not, take him to how he had
gotten here, but was focused on making sense of his current
situation. Logic had to be applied and to scream into the black
made little sense and got less done.

A hurt arm, possibly broken, if anything dislocated. Pain
throughout, he felt like he had fallen some great distance and
landed on his back. Fallen and fallen,through darkness, a great
black void. That did not make much sense though, had he fallen as
far as his subconscious told him he had, he probably would not
have lived.

An outrageous thought came to him then; the darkness had broken
his fall. A dangerous thought. It was not scientifically sound,
especially for a man on the forefront of high reason and
understanding. But he felt as though he had fallen through
darkness so thick and dense he had not really been falling at
all, but rather he drifted downward, end over end much like a
fallen feather. Through the thick blackness from something
important above had he come. Now here in some putrid smelling
pitch black, room? Cave?

His left arm moved. He could move his left arm a little. It was
stiff, and cramped, and the elbow did not want to bend as if it
were a rusted over axle. Slowly he bent his arm and lifted it to
his chest where he let it rest. The muscles in his arm throbbed
and contracted randomly. He lay for a time. How long he couldn't
say. In such a darkness he could not much tell if his eyes were
open or shut. Time passed, however much or little he was unsure,
but time passed. He let his eyes shut. He understood his mind was
under great pressure. Things such as this need to be taken with
care.

This time he did not awake suddenly, but drifted back into
consciousness, his right arm aflame with pain. The pain came
directly from his right elbow and with each pulse, spread,
pumping like hot liquid through his arm, up to his shoulder and
down into his fingers. His left hand lay on his chest where he
had left it before drifting away... drifting into the
blackness... He threw his eyes open, focused, thinking, thinking.
A broken elbow. He must have fallen, and must have landed badly
on that elbow. While everything else hurt, none like his elbow.
He assumed it safe to say, his elbow was all that was broken.
Time mends bones, muscles heal, but if he lay there time would be
his death.

With new resolution, he reached with his left hand, and took hold
of his right wrist. The pain shot fresh through his arm, up his
neck and across his chest. The officer brought his right wrist to
his chest, cradling his arm there. Something broken in the elbow,
to be sure. Facts. Solutions came from facts. He blinked, though
he could not tell it except for feeling his eyelids flutter. Such
darkness.

A fear came. The fear of blindness. He looked hard to the left,
then the right. No pain came from the strain of moving his eyes,
and heavy as his hand felt, a soft touch to his eyes did not
impart any indication of an injury. He felt it somewhat safe to
say that he was only in a place where light did not, and quite
possibly never had, shown before; not a malfunction of his
vision.

With great apprehension and courage, he rolled to his side and
slowly, ever so slowly, so gingerly, using his good arm, pushed
himself up to a sitting position. His head reeled and he gripped
his wrist tightly, painfully, flooding pain from his elbow up to
his head,clearing it, stabilizing him. Time was the enemy; to
pass out again could mean death.

Such darkness.

Such darkness, open or shut his eyes made no difference, so they
remained shut. It was more soothing to be in such darkness
believing it was because your eyes were shut. The truth was
gingerly placed somewhere else, behind the front of his thoughts
where his fine logic preside. With his broken arm cradled in his
lap, he felt his face softly with his left hand. Sore, but
everything in place. Perhaps a little numb from shock he was
sure. He was able to wiggle his toes, and quickly realized one
boot was missing. He sat with one boot and one…soggy sock. He was
somewhere undoubtedly damp, even moist. Like a swamp, though no
nature could be so dark, no moon, no stars, nor even clouds to
reflect the light of the earth.

The man placed his hand on the ground, feeling it more intently
this time. No foliage, only moist, supple ground. More facts.
Facts that could save his life. The ground felt as if he lay on a
mattress, soaked through. He raised his hand to his face and
gagged. It was with great self control the officer did not retch
into his own lap. The revolting stench came to him from his hand
that had been pressed to the ground. From the back of his mind,
where he had placed his concern of the smell, came rushing the
realization he was somewhere of filth. He had had time now to
rationalize, to seize himself, and was now able to cope with this
fact.

Besides wanting to be off of the refuse, he needed to move, to
get mobile. He ran his hand down the front of his body, feeling
the tight buttons and undid one high up on his chest. He then
slid his broken arm in, allowing the uniform to act as a sling.
With some remorse he replaced his left hand on the foul ground
and pivoted to his knees. A wave of dizziness washed over him. It
was not the fear of painfully landing on his broken arm, but the
fear of falling face first into the vile ground that kept him
from collapse. This dedication to remain unsoiled brought
strength to his arm. Once his vision, or rather the concept of
it, had stabled, he pulled his booted foot under him and blindly
reaching out coming up on his leg.

His hand came into hard contact with a wall and he was able to
come to both feet. Again he clung to the wall with his body and
arm. He felt his head spin from the rise. He had no way of
knowing how long he had lain and been immobile, or how he had
come to this place. He had cut his finger it felt like, reaching
into the rough wall so hard because of his blindness. He nearly
raised that finger to his mouth, but quickly pushed it away and
gripped the wall with it. The last thing he wanted was for that
finger, having touched the ground, to go into his mouth.

He rest his shoulder against the wall and with a grimace
repositioned his arm into his uniform more securely. His left
hand then went back to the wall, feeling it with his fingertips.
It was like a cave, jagged rock, some parts rough, others
smoother. Hesitantly placed one booted foot forward, his hand on
the wall, then one socked foot forward. He had to move, he had to
find how he had come here, or how he was to escape. Time was the
danger, and he was an officer, he had an obligation to his nation
to survive and continue the effort.

His fingers scraped and rubbed against the jagged wall as
guidance in the dark. Careful though he was with each step, for
fear of an object, or worse, a drop, he soon moved at what felt a
comfortable pace, with never a change in wall or vision. He
lowered his mouth and nose into his uniform, to try and breathe
in his own body odor rather than his surroundings and step after
step, his thoughts began to wander.

There had been a fire fight. Concrete on all walls, the floor,
and the ceiling. Shouting. A hard recoil into his right shoulder
again, again. English had been storming the bunker. No,
Australians. Filthy Sandgropers. They had forced their way into
the bunker in Bardia, North Africa. The more he walked the more
memory came back to him. Raucous shouts of Australians mixed with
his brothers as he fired down the narrow concrete hallway. Shot
gun shells flying by his face as mortar strikes shook the world,
the lights flickering with every blast that landed. Smoke,
powder, chips of concrete from the walls around him stinging his
cheek.

"Granate" his brother beside him had screamed with a headfirst
lunge.

The man remembered no more than an explosion, and… a fall. Not a
mental or psychological fall. His last image was of his comrade
convulsing under the explosion, the concrete floor falling away
like a broken dinner plate, and such darkness he fell tumbling
into.

The man, the soldier, the officer, had come to a stop, leaning
heavily against the wall. Vivid details had returned of this last
conscious memory. A mixture of fear and anger swelled inside of
him. It was because of some Sandgroper he was here and he meant
to return to lighted world above. He had little doubt his
comrades had beaten back the Australians and were probably
fortifying as he stood there in the dark. They would presume
their officer was dead, and what glory to see your officer raise
again from the dead and take charge into victory. Pride swelled
in his chest, enough to momentarily repress the pain in his arm.

He placed his hand against the wall, feeling the smooth, rough,
sharp and rough textures of the wall that varied from one to the
other with each step he took. The man of science noted quietly to
himself that he must be walking along some ancient lava flow.
Such a thing would explain the textures of the wall that guided
him. He had no knowledge of any volcano existing, or ever having
existed, in this area of North Africa. But he was no geologist,
and who knew what could have existed thousands of years ago, and
remain today. It was a good thought, that a true patriot as
himself was probably the first in this modern age to touch
something of so old an age. He found it proper they two should
meet, even if the conditions were less than favorable for
himself.

He was walking at that same comfortable pace, his thoughts moving
this way and that. Studying the science against his hand,
considering the soft ground beneath him, ignoring the stench
permeating through his uniform covering his mouth and nose, to
the glory and medals he would be awarded for bravery and grand
deeds. So involved in these things was he that it was amazing he
did not notice the shifting surface almost directly in front of
him. He came to a stop, his breath catching in his throat.

In front of him was a great expanse of still water,. So dimly
lit, it was impossible to pin point where the illumination came
from that allowed him to see it through the blackness that had
been so oppressive on his mind. He slowly took in the breath he
had been holding and peered into the water. It was as if
something deep beneath was illuminated. Too far away to see what
it was, or where it was, but bright enough that the far reaches
of its light were capable of reaching the surface.

Though he could see the water, it did not offer any view of his
surroundings, or even much the wall his hand touched; only the
still surface. A new challenge was before him. How to cross the
water to his escape, and he contemplated the risks and
necessities when he noticed the luminosity was growing. His eyes
darted across the surface, back and forth as more and more water
was made apparent by the brightening. No other land or cave or
wall was visible as he stepped towards the water watching.
Unknowingly, his breath was caught short again in his throat.

Then he saw it, the source of bio-illumination, but he instantly
realized it could not be called, "light". It moved towards the
surface. Appendages, many of them, smoothly came to the surface
of the water, half submerged, then to the shore. The man stood
several feet back, unable to move, unable to reason.

Fully beached, driblets of water slid from the creature as if it
were oil. The large frontal part of the fine Prussians mind came
dislodged. Hysteria so devastating, glazed eyes transfixed on the
form approaching. Science was gone, explanation gone with the
dislodged part of the, now mad, mans mind. The form moved as if
slithering, then to legs, then as if balancing on tentacles. It
was humanoid, it was animal, it was demon, it was subphylum
of crustacean and man, then indescribable. The illustrious
being gave no light.

It gave off a darkness that could be seen.

The man gibbered. He spoke no vowels, he spoke like an infant,
noise spilled from his mouth that made no sense at all.

The form took in a breath that cut the mans wind and no more came
from the mans mouth for of his terror. Untangled thoughts came,
wishing he were blind to this darkness, then rapidly changing
that wish to be deaf. Noise came from the now mostly humanoid
form in front of him that sent his mind spinning. So many images
and thoughts not his crashed through the front of his skull and
deep into his mind. All things and knowledge against nature were
made present before the man.

In animal instinct, the form of a man turned to flee away into a
darkness he didn't understand the creature owned. Such haste, his
sock betrayed his escape, slipping to the ground with a heavy
fall. So far gone was the man, he never noticed his broken arm,
or the many layers of supple rot the side of his face pressed
against. All attempts to get up were abandoned as more noise
flooded the darkness around him. He clawed at his ears as the
words formed,